


Nibiru White

by gyunikum



Category: VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, OT3, Sci-Fi, Space Stations, Violence, also poor Taekwoon, there is one oc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 21:57:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8226017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyunikum/pseuds/gyunikum
Summary: When their home is threatened, Taekwoon has to make some tough decisions to save his loved ones. When said home is on a space station, things get a little bit more complicated.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Boy. I don't even know where to start. Un beta-ed so apologies for typos and contradicting stuff in the fic. 
> 
> For the ending I recommend listening to Woodkid's 'Conquest of Spaces' only because of how the song sounds (the lyrics has nothing to do with it tbh)
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Taekwoon had just gotten off the interstation shuttle when his phone pinged with a new message. He huffed in annoyance, and tried to walk out of the way of the stream of people hurrying to the elevators or to the transfer shuttles. He stopped at the feet of the clock pillar in the middle of the station, with only a few people milling around it as they checked the time schedule and the maps on the kiosks, paying no attention to Taekwoon.

_Fancy dinner tomorrow night. Just the three of us._

_—No.1 Wonshikie_

Taekwoon snorted at the display name— he’d completely forgotten to change it back after Sanghyuk seized his phone a few days ago.

_What’s the occasion?_

He hit send, and took a look at the clock. He still had some time to spare before he needed to be back at the office, but the crowd had dispersed already, so Taekwoon began to walk towards the elevators that were now empty of long queues.

_Our Hyukie passed the entrance exam with flying colors._

_—No.1 Wonshikie_

Taekwoon blinked at the screen, and it was only thanks to a stranger bumping into him that he stepped into the elevator just in time before the doors closed, air pressure hissing loudly. He backed into the wall, making sure the screen of his phone didn’t reflect off the surface.

 _Wait… aren’t the results supposed to come out tomorrow?—_ he typed quickly, but his fingers hovered above the send button. Then he added— _how do you know he passed?_

He took a quick glance at the other passengers without wanting to raise suspicion, but all of them were turned towards the windows, waiting for the elevator to come out of the tunnel. In any other circumstances, Taekwoon would be getting ready for the view about to pop up— the only reason he usually took the longer elevator ride rather than the transfer shuttle, but now his mind was too busy conjuring up questions, too confused to focus on anything else.

 _Wonshik, answer me—_ he sent after a minute of silence. _Did you break into the Academy’s system just to see if Sanghyuk passed?? Couldn’t you wait one more day?_

He was about to launch into another rant, fingers shaking with a mix of confusion and anger— the bright, almost pastel colors of Nibiru’s Cloud shined through the glass tube section of the tunnel, a cluster of stars around it flickering endlessly and tirelessly. No matter how many times Taekwoon saw the same view, he would always get entranced by it.

This time, however, he only had time to glance up once before he diverted his eyes back at his phone, waiting for Wonshik’s reply. Every second felt painful, and the elevator ride seemed to slow down to an impossible speed.

Then Taekwoon took a double look, eyes snapping up again— he could see the bluish atmosphere of the nearby planet, Rhea, and the way it bled into the empty space that surrounded them from all sides.

Something tiny glinted in the far distance, but before Taekwoon could make sure what it was, the glass was overtaken by the metal of the tunnel, and fluorescent lights flashing by every hundred meters or so. They irritated Taekwoon’s eyes even more now.

Just when the elevator arrived, Taekwoon’s phone, almost cracking in his strong grip, ringed. He answered it immediately, without looking at the caller ID.

“What the fuck, Wonshik,” he hissed quietly, slipping off to the side after he exited the elevator. He took long strides, pulling up his shoulders a bit in defensive mode. He didn’t want anyone listening to his phone call.

 _“Where are you right now?”_ Wonshik asked hurriedly, somewhat out of breath.

Taekwoon halted suddenly, and someone behind him cursed out as they passed him. Taekwoon took to the side of the avenue, so he wouldn’t be in the way. He didn’t trust his legs to work on automatic seeing as how his whole attention was on what Wonshik had to say.

“I’d just gotten off the elevator. Wonshik, what’s going on?”

Wonshik didn’t answer immediately, and Taekwoon felt too nauseous to stand in one place. Instead of walking back and forth to occupy his mind, he began towards the office once again. The avenue was busy and bright, as always, crowded with people, workers and tourists and shopkeepers— he spotted two soldiers patrolling calmly, their weapons in plain sight, nothing out of ordinary.

Taekwoon tried to school his expression. His office was just around the corner— he would have more privacy in there.

 _“I’m— not sure yet, but— yeah I hacked into the Academy’s system to check Sanghyuk’s results, but then—”_ he cut himself off. Taekwoon was about to ask what happened, but he just arrived to the front of the entrance, automatic doors sliding out of his way immediately, prompting him to go in. The receptionist greeted him with a blinding smile, as always, but all Taekwoon could manage was a robotic nod as he hurried towards the gates.

“Are you still inside?” Taekwoon asked quietly, pressing his ID card that was dangling off his belt to the scanner. The guard standing at the gate spared him no glance, and Taekwoon was free to proceed towards his office. It was a tiny space, but it was his, and offered him way more privacy than the cubicle in which he had started out in the beginning.

_“Yeah, and— I just saw some new data appearing in the restricted areas—”_

“Wonshik, get your ass out of there,” Taekwoon hissed into the phone, fumbling with the remote to close all blinds in his office, though even when all glass walls were covered, he still couldn’t relax for some reason. “You’re risking not only the two of us, but Sanghyuk too.”

 _“They won’t know I was even there, but— Taekwoon, this is something serious, I swear, this shit is so encrypted I can barely see it in the data stream at all,”_ Wonshik said. “ _I’ll try to crack it.”_

“What?” Taekwoon yelped, voice cracking at the ridiculousness of Wonshik’s plan. “No, no, Wonshik, don’t do this— I know you’re good, but it’s— we’re talking about the Academy here for fuck’s sake, they are going to launch all of us into the space if they catch us— Wonshik? Wonshik!”

The line went dead, and Taekwoon wanted to shatter the fucking phone.

“Fuck,” he cursed through gritted teeth, and jerked the mouse to wake up his computer. He had no idea what to do— he couldn’t just run home and check on Wonshik.

He was nowhere near as good as Wonshik when it came to hacking, since he was just a data miner, while Wonshik was cyber security, their skills in computer technology differing greatly. Still, it was thanks to being in the same field of work that they had met in the first place— that training camp on the surface of Rhea nearby one of the outposts where the two of them and a dozen other from the same company had to play scoutboys and survive for a whole week. Taekwoon would be crazy to go back to that company – he was completely fine with his current one, thank you very much – but he couldn’t deny that if he hadn’t been an intern there, he wouldn’t have met Wonshik in the camp— and Sanghyuk either.

Sanghyuk, at that time, was a cadet from a school that prepared people who wanted to enter the Academy, and to boost his stats, he had decided to volunteer to go to the camp with the interns as a guard.

Their history included Wonshik and Taekwoon getting lost in the wilderness, vicious beasts chasing them, and Sanghyuk coming after them to save them— and a life-threatening adventure was enough for the three of them to form a tight friendship that would eventually bloom into a relationship after they returned to the space station.

When both Taekwoon and Wonshik had landed well-paying jobs, they bought a loft in one of the higher levels of the station, and offered Sanghyuk a place in their large bed. It had worked out well, the two of them working in the IT department while Sanghyuk prepared for his entrance exam— and after failing three times in a row, he seemed to finally make it in there.

Unless they found out that Wonshik snooped around and cheated the system, because they would be either locked up in prison or launched out of the nearest airlock.

The Academy, as it was, acted as the commanding organization of the station since there was no outright government— that role fell upon people back on Gaia, but over generations, the Academy had gained the most important role to keep the station working. The part of it Sanghyuk had wanted to get into was just one single department out of many that created the Academy.

Taekwoon didn’t agree with a number of things the Academy had done and kept doing, but even he had to admit that it kept the order of the station whole.

Wonshik called again, after an hour or so, ending Taekwoon’s session of doing nothing but bouncing his legs nervously.

He waited until Wonshik spoke.

_“I need you to help—”_

“No,” Taekwoon rejected immediately. He didn’t need to hear what Wonshik wanted his help with. “Wonshik, I know what you’re planning, and I’m against it.”

_“This is more serious than I thought, and if I’m right, then we don’t have much time.”_

Taekwoon’s legs stopped. “What?” he blurted out as he stared at the screen, unseeing. “What do you mean?”

 _“I’m not sure. But I found a coded message in the profiles of many Academy instructor— the higher ups, like that Ahn Commander guy that Sanghyuk always talks about,”_ Wonshik said in hushed tones, and Taekwoon could hear him typing away on his keyboard in the background.

“Do you know what’s in the message?”

 _“Yeah,”_ Wonshik trailed off. _“GPS coordinates to Rhea. And authentication codes.”_

“Like… what?” Taekwoon asked slowly, his brain taking its time to register the meaning. “Like—”

_“For the escape pods, Taekwoon. All of them got emergency codes for the escape pods, and coordinates to the same location.”_

Taekwoon held the phone away from his ear, the hand that was gripping it going loose, though he caught himself in the last moment.

“Does this mean they are planning to leave the station together?” Taekwoon concluded, and his voice surprised even him. It couldn’t be— he was just overreacting, they both were overreacting. Maybe Wonshik made a mistake in decoding the message. Maybe it was just an update of the usual emergency plan— that didn’t mean something was going to happen.

 _“What else would it be? The messages have been going out for the whole day— Taekwoon, I… I have a really bad feeling about this,_ ” he trailed off. Taekwoon hated how insecure Wonshik sounded.

“We can’t just use the escape pods ourselves— there must be a reason why they haven’t started an evacuation if it was something bad,” Taekwoon reasoned. Or at least, he tried to, but if he wanted to be honest with himself, it wasn’t Wonshik who he wanted to persuade, but himself. Wonshik was already convinced.

_“Come back home— Taekwoon. I need to figure this out, but I want you to be here. I’ll— I’ll call Sanghyuk too.”_

“Wonshik, we’re just overreacting this,” Taekwoon attempted. Despite his words, he was opening all the news sites he could remember, but he doubted he’d find anything about what Wonshik was talking about.

_“I wish I was. Please, Taekwoon— do you want me to beg?”_

Taekwoon looked at the clock. His boss was going to be furious with him if he left on such a short notice, even if he came up with a good excuse, but he couldn’t swallow the feeling of an omen that Wonshik had planted in him with his words.

It was better to be safe than sorry.

He sighed. “Alright. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Call me when you find something new,” he got up, preparing to set out once again. “And Wonshik?”

_“Yeah?”_

“It’s going to be okay.”

When Taekwoon was about to slip out of the office, trying not to walk too fast so as not to appear any more suspicious than he already was, he stopped for a moment as he passed the reception’s desk— should he tell the receptionist to go home too?

Should he alert everybody in case something big was going to happen?

What if it was just a false alarm? Then best case scenario, Taekwoon would lose his job, and no other company would hire him— however vast the space station might have been, words travelled fast between the businesses.

And he couldn’t go back to Gaia. The station was the only place for him, there was no life for him on Gaia. There had never been. His life was here on the station, with Wonshik and Sanghyuk.

Taekwoon left without a word, and headed for the nearby interstation shuttles.

 _Keep me updated,_ he sent Wonshik as he waited for the shuttle. The station was rather empty at this hour, most people in this area working in their own offices that started and ended business roughly at the same time.

_I’m in the Sentinels’ system now. Exact same messages sent to everyone who’s higher rank than a patrol. Guess they don’t need foot soldiers on Rhea._

_—No.1 Wonshikie_

Taekwoon tapped his feet in frustration, staring at the clock counting back the minutes until the train would arrive.

 _Have you called Sanghyuk yet?_ He typed in.

As he waited for Wonshik’s reply, Taekwoon glanced around the station— he noticed a woman looking at her watch every five seconds, her facial expressions tight, frowning. She was just as impatient as Taekwoon.

_He isn’t picking up. I think he’s still at the Academy, waiting for the results to be posted._

_—No.1 Wonshikie_

The woman was cursing under her breath, chanting _come on, come on you bloody train,_ when she wandered too close for Taekwoon to make out her words.

_I can get Sanghyuk. The Academy is closer to me._

The shuttle turned the corner, headlights flooding the dark tunnel it was coming from. The woman was practically hopping on her legs, stomping at the edge of the platform.

_We shouldn’t be separated. I still need your help in something. Then we’ll go get Sanghyuk together._

_—No.1 Wonshikie_

Only when Taekwoon got on the train did the woman notice him— they stared at each other, her with widened eyes as if she was ashamed, and Taekwoon with confusion until the shuttle jerked into motion and sped up in a matter of seconds.

_I’m in the station’s system now. There are messages scheduled to everyone who got authentication codes telling them when to go and which escape pod to use._

_—No.1 Wonshikie_

Taekwoon had to sit down on a seat as he held onto a nearby handle. His stomach swooped, and though the speed of the interstation shuttles were usually the cause, now it was the anxiety. He felt like throwing up his lunch right there.

He didn’t know what to tell Wonshik. This was getting worse and worse, and Taekwoon squeezed his eyes shut tightly, hoping that he had just fallen asleep at work, and this was a simple nightmare.

The phone buzzed in his hands, and Taekwoon was still on the shuttle, traveling across space in a tunnel that could be destroyed so very easily— the shuttle wasn’t built to withstand the space, and there was only two, thin walls of protection between Taekwoon and the black vacuum that would kill him in a fragment of a second.

His skin crawled, and suddenly, the cabin of the train felt extremely small.

Taekwoon wanted to get out.

For the first time in his life, he didn’t feel safe on the station— he wanted the false safety that came with standing on the solid ground of a planet, which, in that aspect, was a piece of rock, a natural space station traveling through the galaxy just like the man-made station Taekwoon called home.

Suddenly, he felt too small, but Wonshik’s message distracted him.

_The last message is going to be issued in half an hour. I’m going to delete three and get the authentication codes for us._

_—No.1 Wonshikie_

The train stuttered, and Taekwoon’s heart leaped into his throat. The woman was standing in the door, leaning against it with hunched shoulders. She was on her phone. Taekwoon looked at the screen that displayed the map of the whole space station— a conglomeration of smaller stations, connected together in multiple ways. There were still five minutes until the stop at the residential station. He would need to transfer to a local transportation— the elevator was too slow, but the monorail didn’t come as often.

 _You can’t do this to those people,_ Taekwoon typed out of a sudden whim. He didn’t know why he felt guilty—

_If they are evacuating the station without telling the population about it, then they deserve it for saving their hide without doing anything to help the simple workers._

_—No.1 Wonshikie_

Taekwoon’s fingers hovered above the screen. Wonshik had sent the message so quickly, as if he had already been thinking of how to justify his own actions.

_Then start the evacuation. Right now._

The residential station came into view as the tunnel began to lighten up with the fluorescent lights.

_I can’t. The station’s central command is off-grid, it’s impossible to access it._

_—No.1 Wonshikie_

Taekwoon huffed and stuffed the phone into his pocket as he stood up, preparing to get off. Like this, what made them so different than those people who slyly slipped out before shit could hit the fan. They were doing the exact same thing as those people.

The shuttle came to a stop, and the woman bolted out before the doors could fully open, but Taekwoon didn’t linger much longer either. He made his way towards the elevator— he wanted to get home as soon as possible, and the monorail was always unpredictable. The streets were empty of residents, everybody was at work in the other stations. Taekwoon walked as fast as he could, and by the time he was punching in the entrance code to his block, his body was practically trembling, thoughts of worst case scenarios swirling in his head.

He took the stairs with three steps at a time, almost sprinting down the long hallway. The door beeped after it accepted the code, and Taekwoon stumbled inside.

“Taekwoon?” Wonshik asked immediately, his voice coming from the bedroom. Taekwoon kicked off his shoes and jogged across the short hall, grabbing the door frame as he glanced into their room.

Wonshik, with his black hair a mess, was packing, two bags open on the bed and clothes spilled all over the floor. He glanced at Taekwoon.

“What are you doing?” Taekwoon blinked at him in surprise.

“We need to go get Sanghyuk and leave the station,” Wonshik gabbled as he threw a stack of shirts and jeans onto one of the bags. “We have—” he stopped for a moment to look at his watch, “twenty minutes tops, to get to the lunar launch station.”

“Why not the docks?” Taekwoon asked, stuffing the clothes Wonshik was throwing at him into the bags before Wonshik continued into their small bathroom compartment, objects clattering on the floor as he raided the shelves.

“I managed to schedule a public service announcement due in fifteen minutes, and commanded the docks to start mobilizing all the cargo— they will be able to withstand the orbital drop to Rhea. That’s all I could do in such a short time,” Wonshik explained, still talking a mile a minute, and he was about to launch into another few lines, but Taekwoon stepped in front of him, and wrapped his arms around his torso.

“You did all you could,” Taekwoon said softly, trying to reassure the other. He felt Wonshik’s arms holding onto him— his heart was beating out of his ribcage, Taekwoon could feel it on his own chest. “Did you figure out what’s going to happen?” he asked as he pulled away.

Wonshik shook his head. “I just— couldn’t find anything. I have no idea how they passed on the information between the higher-ups, why exactly they need to use the escape pods.” He sighed in defeat.

Taekwoon squeezed his arms briefly, and smiled at him.

“Let’s pack and get Sanghyuk. I’ll try to call him.” Wonshik nodded and went back to packing for the three of them while Taekwoon dialed Sanghyuk’s number.

He tried until they had to leave, and even after they arrived at the nearest shuttle station, he still had the phone at his ear, listening to the empty rings.

“I hope nothing happened to him,” Wonshik murmured, tightening his grip around the strap of his bag. They had ten minutes until Wonshik’s scheduled message would start playing in the intercom throughout the whole space station, and if everything went according to plan, they would be arriving at the Academy’s campus then.

If people were to take the alarm seriously, most of them would go from the offices to the docks, just out of the way the trio would take to the lunar launch station from the Academy. But even with this plan, so many things could go wrong, and Taekwoon feared that either nobody would take the announcement seriously, or chaos would erupt in the station as everybody tried to save their lives.

Taekwoon wished they had more time, just to prepare more— to make sure the threat was real, to make sure people would be convinced.

They sat on the shuttle huddled next to each other with Wonshik opening his computer on his lap.

“I have limited access to anything from here, so I can’t do much,” Wonshik mumbled, his voice reaching only Taekwoon’s ears underneath the shuttle’s noise. “But when I was going through the Academy’s system I found a bunch of damaged files in the junk.”

“Did you restore them?” Taekwoon asked quietly, eyes trained at the screen.

“No. I was hoping you could try and see if you can scavenge some information out of them. They might be useful,” Wonshik explained. “We have ten minutes to pass,” he added.

Taekwoon nodded and grabbed the computer.

Data mining wasn’t his only job in the office, but restoring damaged files was always tricky— one wrong line of code, and everything would be lost forever, no way to get it back. If this was from the Academy, then it meant the files could contain crucial information.

Taekwoon worked quickly, fingers flying over Wonshik’s well-worn keyboard, while Wonshik busied himself with trying to reach Sanghyuk and leaning forward to hide the screen whenever a person would pass by them on the train.

By the time they had to get off, arriving at the station where the Academy’s main building was located, Taekwoon had squeezed everything out of the files that Wonshik managed to save.

Their steps were hasty as they made their way across the campus and the park— the grass and trees seemed to be greener here than anywhere else in the whole station.

Wonshik had the computer perched on his lower arms, so it fell upon Taekwoon to steer him away whenever he was about to walk into a lamp post or a bench.

“They don’t mention what’s coming, but something is coming our way, fast, and it’s on crash course with us,” Wonshik concluded, his voice shaking. They were past the initial revelation of the news, as they had been on the shuttle when Taekwoon gradually recovered the data in simple text files, but the fact was only realizing in their minds now.

“I don’t understand,” Taekwoon said. “The station has defenses for situations exactly like this— meteors and space junk and—”

Wonshik came to a sudden halt, and Taekwoon almost crashed into him.

“Something’s wrong.”

“What?” Taekwoon asked, and looked around. The campus was peaceful— too peaceful if that could be a thing. He watched as Wonshik closed the computer with a sense of finality in his body language.

“The announcement,” Wonshik stated, glancing at his watch. “It should have been triggered already.”

They stared at each other, and the tension between them felt like that silent moment before a destructive storm that Taekwoon had only known from books and movies set on Gaia and Rhea.

The sirens started blaring when Taekwoon and Wonshik was inside the Academy’s building which was completely deserted— something that had never happened before. They only knew the place from Sanghyuk’s tales, but the building was always crawling with people according to him.

Now, it was completely abandoned, frightening even, as the loud sirens echoed through the empty hallways.

“This is a different one, this isn’t the announcement I scheduled,” Wonshik exclaimed, looking at Taekwoon with wide eyes. Taekwoon lifted his index finger, and they glanced up as they perked their ears.

_“…All personnel must report to their designated docks. This is not a drill. All personnel must evacuate—”_

“We need to find Sanghyuk.”

They ran down deserted hallways with only one goal floating before their eyes, but no matter how many rooms they checked, they just couldn’t find Sanghyuk. Time was quickly running out.

“This is a waste of time!” Wonshik shouted in frustration. He slammed his computer onto a nearby table, almost breaking the device.

“We can’t leave him here!” Taekwoon countered, trying to stay level-headed. The sirens blaring in their ears, almost echoing off the walls of the station’s inside was driving him crazy, he could barely focus on his own thoughts.

Wonshik was about to open his mouth when they heard something from a corridor, heavy thuds of the boots of a patrol coming close, and before they could hide, the lone soldier appeared from the doorway, spotting them immediately.

“You two! What are you doing here?” the soldier demanded. Taekwoon glanced at Wonshik, stalling the moment, while Wonshik looked at the patrol with a dumbfounded expression. “Why are you not with your group? Almost all the shuttles have left.”

“We missed the others and don’t know where to go,” Taekwoon said, the lie coming as easily as if it was the truth, and his tone was convincing enough to persuade the soldier.

“Okay, come with me. We don’t have much time,” the soldier agreed, waving at them to follow him. Wonshik and Taekwoon caught up with him quickly, and they walked down hallways with fast steps, until they reached an emergency staircase.

“Do you know what’s going on?” Wonshik asked as they descended to lower floors, and Taekwoon shot him a hard glance, mouthing at him to keep quiet.

“Didn’t they tell you?” the soldier shot back, his voice distorted through his helmet.

“No. I was hoping you could enlighten us,” Wonshik continued. He tried to tell Taekwoon something with only his expressions, but Taekwoon had no idea. His stomach was trembling with fear of the soldier figuring out their bluff.

“Then you don’t have to know— are you new here?” the soldier asked, the wondering tone in his voice clear. The sirens had become muffled as they put more floors between them and the surface, and the metallic echoes of their steps unnerved Taekwoon more than the evacuation notice.

“Yeah, completely new,” Wonshik nodded fervently when the soldier turned his head back to glance at them.

“First lesson they teach you here is to obey your command without a word. So shut the fuck up before I leave you here,” the soldier growled. “I’m sick of this place,” he murmured.

In a few minutes, they reached the bottom of the stairs, the sirens nothing but a thin sound they could barely hear anymore. The soldier opened a heavy-looking door and entered— Taekwoon and Wonshik followed after a glance at each other.

They needed to get away from this guy and look for Sanghyuk— they both agreed. They were already past the time the last message would be sent.

The hallway they ended up in looked considerably less decorated and illuminated, and both Wonshik and Taekwoon knew that this path was not a place a simple worker, or even an Academy student would be allowed to visit otherwise. Maybe it was one of the many service tunnels that criss-crossed the whole station, but neither of them knew where they were headed— maybe the Academy had private docks for all they knew.

When they stopped to open another sealed door, they heard a clang in the silence.

“What was that?” Wonshik yipped. Another clang came, metallic, the echoes of the empty hallways amplifying it. Even the soldier stopped to listen as more clinks and clangs surrounded them from every direction.

Suddenly, the soldier’s radio cracked. _“Lee, Lee! Where the fuck are you? Get your ass out of there, the wreckage reached us sooner than what Gaia sa—”_ but the line went dead.

“Hey, Min, what are you talking about?” the soldier replied in confusion. The clanks were even more distracting than the emergency sirens blaring in their ears. “Min!”

“What’s going on?” Taekwoon demanded, stepping forward. He knew he had no chance against a patrol even if the other didn’t have his weapon— Taekwoon wouldn’t make a dent on the soldier’s armor with his fist.

“I don’t know!” the soldier yelled. “We need to get to the docks— why is this shit not opening?!” he banged on the panel next to the door, the screen showing red. For some reason, it wasn’t accepting the soldier’s code.

The soldier grabbed his weapon, and turned to Wonshik and Taekwoon. “Stand back.”

The other two obeyed, taking long steps backwards as they watched the soldier direct his gun towards the door, ready to shoot at it. Taekwoon lifted his arm to the side, pressing it to Wonshik’s torso— the motion came like an instinct, to try to protect Wonshik from any harm.

Before the soldier could fire his weapon, the door hissed open, revealing someone that Taekwoon couldn’t see as the soldier obscured his view.

“Catch him!” a distant shout echoed down the hallway. “Shoot him, soldier!”

“Sorry dude—” came a familiar voice, and before Taekwoon’s brain could register it, the soldier that guided them here fell to the floor, revealing the person standing in front of him. The door closed behind the figure as he shot the panel on the wall.

“Sanghyuk!” Wonshik cried out, and jumped from behind Taekwoon.

“Wonshik?” Sanghyuk yelped in surprise, and his gun clattered on the floor as Wonshik threw himself on Sanghyuk. “Taekwoon— what are you doing here?” he asked, eyes wide. He was wearing a navy blue jumpsuit with the Academy’s insignia embroidered on its front, and sweat was sticking his bangs to his forehead, long enough to cover his eyes— Sanghyuk swept a hand across his face.

“We were looking for you,” Wonshik explained quickly. “We need to leave the station— do you know what’s going on?”

Sanghyuk crouched down and picked the soldier’s considerably larger weapon off him— Taekwoon stared at the unmoving body, and took a deep breath. He hoped the guy wasn’t dead, but he knew it was emergency— Sanghyuk would never kill someone else.

“I’ll explain everything, but we need to go to the docks,” Sanghyuk said, tossing his own gun to Taekwoon.

Taekwoon caught it with unsure hands— it’d been long since he was a cadet before he had decided that the life of a soldier was not meant for him. It happened long years ago, but it seemed like the standard guns were still the same. He checked its energy levels to make sure it still had ammunition in its magazine, and hoped that he wouldn’t have to use it.

“No, the lunar launch station is closer— the docks must be in chaos by now,” Wonshik shook his head as they made their way down the hallway back where they came from. “I secured ourselves three escape pods.”

Sanghyuk nodded, and led them down another hallway, their quick steps the only sound apart from the continuous clangs and their breaths. They didn’t talk as they picked up the pace until they were almost running, a feeling of apprehension following them like a shadow.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Taekwoon asked suddenly.

“Yeah, I know the blueprint of this part like the back of my hand,” Sanghyuk grinned back at them. “Figured it would come in handy once I become part of the Academy.”

“The Academy is done for,” Wonshik commented. “Just like this whole station.”

“Maybe,” Sanghyuk shrugged. “But I would rather we wait it out on Rhea.” They all agreed on that.

After a few more minutes, just before they were about to round a corner, Sanghyuk stopped them and motioned for them to stand by the wall, his index finger by his lips. Then he peeked out around the corner, and pulled back immediately.

“Fuck, the docks are all useless and the lunar launch station has been destroyed,” a soldier informed another as the pair ran down the hallway, passing the trio without noticing them. Everybody was saving their own lives by now.

Sanghyuk turned back and looked at Wonshik and Taekwoon. “What now?” he asked. His chest heaved up and down as he leaned against the wall, cradling the large rifle to his body— Wonshik and Taekwoon were in a worse shape in that aspect, since they were never forced to work out like Sanghyuk. Taekwoon, for one, felt like he was about to spit his lungs out.

“We could try the Academy’s docks?” Wonshik suggested, panting heavily as he braced himself on a pipe that ran along the wall.

“Not good,” Sanghyuk shook his head. “We wouldn’t be able to get through the security— they forced all of us, even the freshly accepted, to go to the docks. Took all our phones and everything, didn’t let us leave,” he sighed. “I could barely escape and they had been chasing me before I found you guys.”

Taekwoon placed a hand on Sanghyuk’s shoulder, then slipped it behind his neck as he stepped in front of the youngest of them.

“It’s okay,” he whispered and pressed their foreheads together. “We were so worried about you.”

Sanghyuk smiled at them, though his eyes remained remorseful. When Taekwoon pulled away, Sanghyuk hefted his weapon higher and pushed himself away from the wall.

“Where are the closest escape pod launchers?”

“Not far from the campus,” Sanghyuk answered immediately. He snapped his fingers as he bit into his lip, forcing his brain to remember the exact location. “Let’s go, we can make it there sooner down here.”

The clanks that assaulted the outer surface of the station turned louder and louder until something shook the ground beneath their feet— they couldn’t hear anything apart from a low rumbling, but they had to grab onto the pipes to stay upright as an intense quake tore through the whole station.

“This is not good,” Sanghyuk noted, out of breath. He helped Wonshik up from the floor while Taekwoon climbed to his feet— his legs felt like jelly.

“Did something clash with the station?” Wonshik asked, and his adam’s apple bobbled up and down as he swallowed.

“I’m not sure what it is exactly,” Sanghyuk answered as they headed towards their destination. “They said some space junk was coming towards us, but then it turned out to be so vast that the station’s defenses weren’t going to be able to handle it.”

“So what, they’re just leaving everyone to die?” Wonshik asked in disbelief.

“They said there would be enough time to evacuate the whole station,” Sanghyuk countered. “Commander Ahn said the news only reached the station a few hours ago,” he explained.

“That’s a fucking lie,” Wonshik seethed. “They’ve been sending out authentication codes for the escape pods to important people for the last twenty hours.”

“What?” Sanghyuk stopped in his tracks with his mouth hanging open. “Where’d you get this from?” he asked, almost in a demanding tone. Taekwoon got the feeling that Sanghyuk didn’t want to believe Wonshik— he had talked about Commander Ahn a lot since he first applied to the Academy.

Sanghyuk had visited the Academy a lot for the past three years, and he had made acquaintances with the Commander— Taekwoon wasn’t sure what he was to Sanghyuk, maybe a mentor, but Taekwoon had never minded the way Sanghyuk talked about the commander. It was with admiration, but only on a professional way, and Taekwoon never feared his place – and Wonshik’s too – in Sanghyuk’s heart.

“I found the messages in the Academy’s system, that’s where— they couldn’t even get rid of them properly.”

“No,” Sanghyuk objected, “Commander Ahn wouldn’t lie about this—”

“We need to get moving!” Taekwoon stepped in, raising his voice. “We can discuss it on Rhea, but I don’t want to be here when that thing crashes with the station,” he looked at the other two pointedly.

Wonshik huffed, crossing his arms, and Sanghyuk nodded, the tendons in his jaw flexing as he gritted his teeth together.

Through the tunnel they arrived to a small hangar, climbing down a ladder and dropping into an observational office cautiously.

“Stay down,” Sanghyuk hissed at them. He pointed at the row of windows looking out at the hangar, and held up two fingers. “The pods are ok,” he whispered.

Wonshik and Taekwoon crawled next to Sanghyuk as he sat up at the bottom of the wall, the windows just above their heads.

“What should we do?” Wonshik asked. “You can’t take out two of them.”

“No,” Sanghyuk shook his head, agreeing with Wonshik. “Not even with Taekwoon,” he shot a look at the gun in Taekwoon’s clammy hands, and Taekwoon swallowed. He gripped the weapon, willing his hands to stop shaking. “We need a distraction.”

“I can take care of it,” Wonshik said with a smirk, and slid down a bit to slip the backpack off his shoulders. He pulled his computer out and put it on the ground in front of him. It took him less than a minute to speak up. “Aha. There. We can lock them in the storage room—”

Another quake came, stronger than the previous one, and this one was escorted by a loud explosion somewhere— the chassis of the station groaned and creaked as the unknown object collided with the structure, as the heat bent and melted the metal. Surely by now, there were breaches already, oxygen seeping into the void, and it was a matter of time until the destruction reached the trio’s current location too.

Salvation was close to them, and all they needed to do was to pass two guards.

“Never mind,” Wonshik groaned as he kept hitting the keyboard— his computer didn’t respond.

“Okay,” Sanghyuk inhaled, “plan-B, I go in with guns blazing while Taekwoon covers me, and we’ll hope they don’t hit us,” he explained hastily.  Taekwoon craned his neck to look out the window, praying that neither of the guards chose that moment to look their way.

“This is the stupidest idea,” Wonshik argued back.

“That won’t be necessary,” Taekwoon said after he checked through the entire hanger twice— the guards were gone.

“What?” Sanghyuk blurted out, and mirrored Taekwoon’s position in front of the window. He peeked out as well, and let out a surprised sound as he, too, noticed that the hangar was completely devoid of humans. “Stay here, I’ll make sure they’re gone.”

Wonshik opened his mouth to object, but Taekwoon grabbed his wrist, and nodded at Sanghyuk.

“What was that?” Wonshik hissed as he slammed his computer shut and slipped it back into his bag— they would still need it down on Rhea for all they knew.

“He’s not a kid anymore,” Taekwoon replied. He sniffed, rubbing his nose with a finger— the thing he always did when he was nervous, and both Wonshik and Sanghyuk knew him well enough to know the language of his body.

Wonshik scoffed, and Taekwoon saw his fingers twitch. It was still an awkward topic for the two of them— Sanghyuk had grown up so quickly, and it wasn’t just his physique, the way he filled up the available space on the bed between Taekwoon and Wonshik without pushing them off the edge.

“No, he’s not a kid, but he isn’t bulletproof either,” Wonshik retorted. Taekwoon shot him a deadpan look. “You know I’m right.”

“There is no need to baby him,” Taekwoon said adamantly. For most part, he agreed with Wonshik, and he knew that Wonshik was just worried for Sanghyuk— his life after he graduated the Academy would have been dangerous, life-threatening even.

There was a time when both of them tried to talk Sanghyuk out of it, but the youngest was having none of it. Joining the Academy was his only reason for being on the station, and Sanghyuk was hell-bent on becoming part of the elite troops.

“He thinks he’s invincible just because he finally entered the Academy,” Wonshik argued back.

Sanghyuk saved Taekwoon from having to retaliate to Wonshik’s argument when he opened into the office.

“The coast’s clear,” he informed them, jerking his head towards the hangar. The other two scrambled to their feet without a word, hurrying down the metal steps to reach the escape pods that lined one side of the room, argument long forgotten.

There were five pods, just waiting to be used.

“Wonshik goes first,” Sanghyuk said, almost in a commanding tone. “We’ll meet at Arcadis.”

“Why there?” Wonshik asked hastily as Sanghyuk pushed him into one of the escape pods. It was a small aerodynamic cylinder, with barely any spare space for an adult inside, so Sanghyuk could barely fit in, as he stepped inside to boot up the system.

“That’s the only coordinates on Rhea that I know, plus it’s a working outpost,” Sanghyuk explained as he fed the pod’s system the required information. The lights turned on, and small lamps flickered on as the pod came to life.

Sanghyuk was about to step out after he finished when Wonshik grabbed his hand.

“Don’t make me wait for you too long,” Wonshik said softly, quietly, but Taekwoon could hear it clearly. He watched from behind as Sanghyuk stopped, and after a moment, leaned in to capture Wonshik’s chapped lips for a brief kiss. When Sanghyuk pulled away and stepped next to Taekwoon, the boy laced their fingers together as they watched the pod close its door, hiding Wonshik away within its confinement with only a small rectangle window to grant them a view to Wonshik’s face. The mechanism worked loudly, the outer casing of the pod closing around it with a hiss of white cloud.

 Suddenly Wonshik’s eyes widened as he noticed something, and opened his mouth in a shout.

Before Taekwoon could turn around, there was a dull thud, and a pained sound left Sanghyuk— he was yanked out of Taekwoon’s grip in a brute way. His hand flew to the gun automatically as he whirled on his heels, but a fist connected with his face, and Taekwoon found himself on the grated floor, a foot stepping onto his back for good measure.

Wonshik’s pod left the hangar, ejected into space.

“Commander Ahn!” Sanghyuk exclaimed in surprise.

“Didn’t think you would see me ever again, did you?” said man spoke up, his voice deep and strong— Taekwoon’s skin crawled as the pain settled in his cheekbone. “You hurt me greatly when you left me there for your… fuckboys. You disappointed me, Sanghyuk, but I’m willing to forgive you.”

“You lied to me,” Sanghyuk bit back as he struggled. “You lied to everyone— you said everyone would have time to leave the station but you sent the others—”

“Shh,” the commander cut in. “The others are fine. Everyone is fine. Even your lover is going to be fine if you cooperate.”

Taekwoon wanted to turn his head around and look at the commander— he wanted to stare him in the eye and tell him to fuck off, but the foot was still digging into his spine, and Taekwoon was just simply too weak.

“What do you want from me?” Sanghyuk asked desperately. “Please, just don’t hurt Taekwoon,” he pleaded, and Taekwoon squeezed his eyes shut, tears prickling at the back of his eyes. Sanghyuk shouldn’t have been in this position— it should have been Taekwoon in his place, protecting the boy from any harm, and Wonshik, they were supposed to be the ones taking care of Sanghyuk, not the other way around.

“I promise I won’t hurt your Taekwoon,” the commander said softly, his saccharin tone toxic. “You’ve been very loyal to me Sanghyuk, kissed up to me so well for the past three years— it would be a shame to leave you waste away here, but you need to learn where your priorities are— which is the Academy, and me.”

Sanghyuk kept silent, and Taekwoon had to bite into his lower lip to keep back the sob that wanted to leave his chest.

“And that’s why you will have to shoot your pretty lover in the chest if you want to leave,” Commander Ahn said, and something happened because Sanghyuk cried out in pain. Taekwoon whimpered on the floor, his muscles burning with the desire to push the soldier off his body, jump to his feet and kill everyone that threatened Sanghyuk and him.

His mind stronger was than his body, though.

Suddenly Taekwoon was grabbed and yanked off the ground, four hands wrapping around his shoulders and biceps as he was forced onto his knees— he stared at the large man standing behind Sanghyuk, but the commander lost Taekwoon’s interest almost immediately.

Sanghyuk was holding a gun at Taekwoon, his face devoid of all emotions.

Taekwoon swallowed— he felt something tremble in his chest.

It wasn’t his trust in Sanghyuk.

The soldier on Taekwoon’s left crumbled to the floor as soon as the first shot rang out, and the one on his left followed closely— Taekwoon ducked towards Sanghyuk as the commander knocked out the boy from behind.

“Deal with him!” the commander shouted as he grabbed Sanghyuk’s limp body, and began to drag him away towards the exit.

Taekwoon grabbed the gun that Sanghyuk dropped and crawled behind the nearest cover as the metal surface reflected off the shots from the remaining two soldiers.

“Sanghyuk!” Taekwoon shouted over the commotion. When the firing stopped, Taekwoon peeked out and shot towards the general direction of the soldiers, though he was certain that he would not hit either of them.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” one of the soldiers yelled, followed by more shots, hissing and then heavy steps fading away. Taekwoon’s ears rang, his heart drumming in his head, and he waited for long minutes.

In the silence he could hear distant sirens coming from some part of the station and the muffled clanking.

He crawled out of his hiding spot, and the first thing he noticed was that all the escape pods were smoking out of small holes with the sides melted from the laser bullets of the soldiers.

“Fuck!” he cursed out loudly. He looked around, breaths turning shallow and rapid as his mind tried to come up with a plan— he needed to get Sanghyuk back, first of all, and then search for another way out of this hell hole.

He doubted there would be any working escape pods by now— he had a feeling that the whole station was barely keeping itself together, the assault of the space junk had started a while ago already.

The only door that led out of the hangar refused to open, even after Taekwoon sent some shots into the panel, hoping that it would work like it did in movies. For a full minute, his brain went blank after he realized that he’s stuck in the empty hangar before he remembered the way they had come from.

With the gun in his hand, Taekwoon climbed up the ladder in the observation room, and tried to remember which direction the hallway led— where the commander might have decided to take Sanghyuk to.

Feeling completely lost, just holding onto the last bits of his rational thoughts, he sprinted down the narrow tunnel until a violent explosion sent him into the wall, and then to the ground before the flooring gave up and caved in underneath him.

Pain flared up in his body as Taekwoon landed on the floor beneath the tunnel, and he rolled out of the way just in the last moment as the hallway fell apart slowly. Red colored emergency lights had replaced the fluorescent lamps, and the station was shaking once again.

Taekwoon had no idea where he was, but he jumped to his feet and ran in one direction until he came across an intersection. He turned around, and in the corner of his eyes he caught sight of a person at the other end of another corridor.

When Taekwoon reached the corner, he held up the gun in front of him, and stepped out, preparing to shoot whoever it was.

The door closed behind Commander Ahn, and through the glass Taekwoon could see the man pull Sanghyuk around his shoulder before making his way towards something Taekwoon couldn’t make out just yet. Luckily, the commander hadn’t noticed him.

Knowing better than to go in guns blazing – unlike Sanghyuk – Taekwoon looked for another way around the sealed door, finding it in a narrow access panel on the ceiling, to another service tunnel that ran between two floors just like the previous one.

Taekwoon jumped up and grabbed onto the edge, pulling himself up only to find out that this passageway was so small that he could only crawl on his stomach. Nevertheless, he continued on towards the right direction, and stopped at the first way out he came across. He shot the sides of the door, and kicked the panel off.

He dropped down, and stayed on the ground as someone shot at him not even a second later.

“You just can’t give up, can you?!” the commander yelled in frustration, and let some more shots loose, all of them flying above Taekwoon’s head.

Taekwoon checked his surroundings quickly, looking for another cover. He didn’t know where the commander was, nor could he figure out where the shots were coming from, just a general direction.

“Just let us go to Rhea in peace!” Taekwoon shouted back.

The commander replied by shooting at him multiple times.

He was in another hangar, bigger than the previous one with robotic arms mounted on the walls that were used for the heavy work when loading and unloading supplies of cargo ships— no escape pods nearby. Maybe this was a smaller dock that the general populace of the station didn’t know about, since there was no need for them to be aware of its existence other than the staff that manned the machines here. It would make sense to have more docks than just one for the whole space station.

“Sorry, can’t do!” Commander Ahn countered, his voice echoing in the hangar. Taekwoon couldn’t see what he was doing, nor did he hear anything telltale. “I’m going to punish Sanghyuk for disobeying me— _me!_ ” he shouted back, strands of hysteria settling in his tone. “I am the god of this station, nobody disobeys me!”

“You’re crazy, that’s what you are!” Taekwoon yelled. He didn’t care that he sounded desperate— he was _desperate_ as he listened to the station fall apart around them.

Time was running out quickly, and he was in the finish line, yet is seemed so far away from him.

There was no way he was going to defeat the commander in a direct shootout— the man was just way more experienced in combat than Taekwoon, he was stronger, and skilled in strategies. Taekwoon figured the only reason he was still alive was because the commander was busy dragging Sanghyuk along.

“I might be crazy, but you’re going to be the one to die here!” the man replied. “And when I get to Rhea, I’m going to hunt down that lanky guy and make Sanghyuk watch as I skin his lover alive so he’ll learn his place!”

Taekwoon bit back the sob that wanted to escape his throat— his whole body was shaking so much, and a violent spasm rocked through his muscles, as if mirroring the station. He touched the back of the weapon to his forehead, squeezing his eyelids tightly.

How was he going to come out of this with Sanghyuk and Wonshik alive, all three of them safe and sound on Rhea, and the threat of the commander nothing but a bad memory?

Taekwoon wished he had decided to stay with the Sentinels so now he would know how to take down another human— how to protect the ones that needed to be protected.

Wasn’t it his job to protect his loved ones?

What good did it do if he wasn’t ready to sacrifice himself for Wonshik and Sanghyuk?

Taekwoon didn’t want to die— why couldn’t things just work out, why couldn’t they just get Sanghyuk and escape to Rhea without any problems?

Why did that fucking space trash have to come right their way when there was an infinite number of other directions it could’ve gone?

Everything was going so well for them— sure they wouldn’t have lived until Rhea’s terraforming was complete, but Taekwoon didn’t mind living the rest of his life on a space station if it meant that he got to spend his years with Sanghyuk and Wonshik. He never wanted much, he was fine with what he had, what he had worked for.

He didn’t ask for this— to be pitted against the commander of the station’s troops, gone completely insane.

“Where are you hiding?” Taekwoon heard the man ask in a sing-song voice from too close to Taekwoon’s liking. He had spaced out too much, he needed to find another hiding place to cook up a plan before the station blew to pieces.

Taekwoon listened, holding his breath back, and he heard the metallic steps of the commander’s boots, slowly closing to where Taekwoon was hiding behind some large crates. He quietly began to crawl away from the source of the sound, crouching so his hands were free.

“Come on out, I don’t have all day!”

Taekwoon got startled from the booming voice, and rounded the crate’s corner almost instinctually, hoping that the commander didn’t notice him. He looked to the other side and noticed the nose of an interceptor the station used to deploy in times of need, already prepared to set out into the space. He couldn’t see Sanghyuk anywhere, but he was sure the other was somewhere around the ship.

He knew that he had to act first— this hide and seek was going to lead them nowhere but to all three of them dying on the station if Taekwoon didn’t do something. He couldn’t let the commander take the initiative.

But what was he supposed to do?

He couldn’t defeat the commander directly, nor did he have enough time to discover what the hangar had to offer to him to help him in any way against the other man.

Taekwoon took a deep breath— he would make a dash for the ship and try to get behind the barrels nearby.

No, no, shit the barrels were fuel, he couldn’t go there— the commander wouldn’t think twice to shoot at it, even if it meant blowing up the ship.

He let his head fall against the crates behind him, and the back of his head hit something protruding. He turned around and saw a metal clasp— two wide straps came from it, fastened around the crates that were actually slightly suspended, tilting to the side. One of the earlier explosions might have had tipped them and it was only the ropes holding the crates in place.

Taekwoon crawled backwards and hastily took off one of his shoes before he tossed it to the other side. He directed the gun towards the clasp and waited.

As soon as the commander appeared behind the crates, Taekwoon shot the clasp and climbed out of the way, scrambling to his feet in a mad sprint towards the spaceship. He heard a yell from behind, but he didn’t dare to look back— he didn’t have time to check if the commander really went down with the crates.

The interceptor was closed, but before Taekwoon could push the button to open the cockpit, a blast barely missed his hand, drilling into the husk of the ship with a loud hiss. Taekwoon jumped off the ship’s wing he was standing on, and cowered behind the platform the ship was on.

He heard a hysterical laugh, and his skin crawled with fear.

“You think you’re smart, huh?!” the commander screamed.

Taekwoon was on the verge of crying— he realized that he was hyperventilating. His arms were shaking as were his legs, and his body refused to move.

He’d been running on adrenaline ever since the commander first ambushed them, and only now was he starting to feel the exhaustion. He felt light-headed and sluggish, and not even when he heard the commander near him could he move his muscles.

“Found you.”

The first kick was the most painful because as much as Taekwoon expected it, he still got surprised at the force with which the tip of the boot made contact with his ribs, sending him to the ground. He heard the commander kick away the gun Taekwoon dropped.

The commander let out a loud exhale, his voice raspy.

“Shit, kid, you’re one tough son of a bitch, I gotta hand it to you,” the man commented with a sick laugh. “That’s why I’m gonna enjoy—” he kicked Taekwoon’s side, “beating—” kick, “the shit—” kick, “out of—” and another kick, “you!”

Taekwoon groaned, unable to push himself to all fours. All he could feel was the pain, the _pain_ , as it surged liquid through his veins. It pulsated through his whole body, and every breath he took drilled an arrow of pain into his side.

When the commander leaned down and fisted Taekwoon’s ponytail, Taekwoon screamed out in agony as the man began to drag him by his hair. His hands flew up to grab onto the commander’s fingers, trying to peel them off his ponytail, but the man didn’t let go no matter how hard Taekwoon clawed at his hands.

The station shuddered again, making the commander stumble and trip, but Taekwoon didn’t have an ounce of energy left in him to get up and run. Commander Ahn regained his balance, and slammed Taekwoon against the nearest wall— pipes and something sharp hit the back of his skull even as his backpack cushioned the impact, and Taekwoon’s head swam for a moment as he tried to regain his senses.

“You’ll die here, in the finish line,” the commander hissed victoriously as he unlooped the belt from around his uniform and kneeled down in front of Taekwoon. He tied Taekwoon’s wrists to a pipe sturdy enough to withstand any of Taekwoon’s struggles, and fastened the belt until Taekwoon was screaming in pain as the material bit into his skin.

“Oh, ho-ho, oh,” the commander chuckled, and grabbed Taekwoon’s hair again on the front. “As a parting gift—” the man warned, and then bashed Taekwoon’s face into the metal.

Taekwoon slumped down the wall and his head lolled to the side— only his arms were holding his torso, and he could feel his shoulder straining, his joints twisting in way they were not supposed to.

He watched through blurry vision as the commander entered the ship, and in the corner of his eyes he could see the hangar’s entrance opening, the field that kept the air pressure inside the bay flickering weakly as the back-up generators tried to keep the whole station powered. If that field were to shut off, Taekwoon would be fucked royally.

He was already fucked as it was.

The ship’s burners turned white, and the interceptor took off into space— took Sanghyuk with it, and Taekwoon’s last hope to get off the station alive.

For long, painful minutes Taekwoon struggled, mustering all his remaining strength as he kept licking the blood off his upper lip that poured out of his broken nose, but the belt only tightened around his wrists. He kicked at the bottom of the pipe, hoping that he would be able to dislocate it, but the metal was just too strong for him.

Taekwoon screamed at the top of his lungs until his voice turned hoarse, trashing against his restraints in a bit of hysteria.

Panic settled over his mind, a thick fog around his muscles.

He couldn’t die like this— he couldn’t. He needed to go to Rhea and get Wonshik and Sanghyuk back.

But that _fucking_ pipe—

The bay’s entrance squeaked loudly as the two sides got stuck with a stripe of space wide enough for a human to get ejected out of the station, and not even a moment later an explosion rocked through the station, loud and close to Taekwoon, so close that the ceiling of the hangar began to collapse, and metal creaked.

Debris was flying everywhere, and Taekwoon curled into a ball to protect his head.

A chain of small detonations went off, the barrels of fuel or the containers of compressed oxygen imploding with an earsplitting sound. Everything was shaking, and Taekwoon thought it was the end.

The force threw Taekwoon against the wall, and alarms went off one after another, orange and red lights going crazy as a recorded voice cracked over the still working intercom—

 _“Breach in the hull—”_ before it got cut off right away, and Taekwoon could feel as the air shifted, began to rush towards the opening on the other side of the hangar. Crates, barrels and every single loose object rolled towards the doors as the air escaped, howling like the wind that Taekwoon could barely remember anymore.

The pipe groaned. Something flew over Taekwoon’s head and crashed into the pipe, making a large dent on it, and then continued towards the doors.

Taekwoon kicked at the pipe, but it was still not enough. He turned and watched helplessly, desperately waiting for another object to smash into the pipe and dislocate it enough so he could escape.

Instead, a part of the hangar was torn off by the force, and the moment before it crashed into the doors, Taekwoon stared, holding his breath back, feeling as if even his heart stopped beating— and then the metal doors bent with a shrill sound, the hole widening, oxygen escaping in a rapid way.

The force was enough to pull at Taekwoon, and he tried to hold onto something as the vacuum clawed at his legs, trying to eject him into space with all the other objects.

The pipe finally game in, and Taekwoon grabbed onto the railing of the nearby stairs as the belt slipped off through the crack. He held onto the railing with all his might as he tried to make his way towards the command office— it had an airlock for emergencies, the windows were still intact.

He climbed painstakingly slow, and his muscles burned. The void outside was siphoning the oxygen straight out of his lungs now that there wasn’t anything else in the hangar.

The airlock refused to operate until Taekwoon banged his fist against the panel— the door hissed open with the last remaining power the station had in circulation, and Taekwoon crashed onto the floor as the air pressure returned. His ears popped loudly, and for a full minute he could barely hear anything.

He rolled over onto his back, lungs wheezing as he panted heavily. He let loose a few loud sobs, tears rolling down his cheeks— even the muscles in his face were on fire.

He was so tired and all he wanted to do was just lie back and wait for the end.

Something smashed into the office’s windows, rousing Taekwoon, and he realized that he might have blacked out for a few moments. There was a crack on one of the glasses, but luckily it held— Taekwoon didn’t want to try his luck.

He needed to get out of here.

Tossing the bag off his back, the motion causing pain to burst in his side, Taekwoon checked its contents, cursing as he only saw wrinkled clothes, until a familiar object clattered on the grated floor— a rebreather. It was useless outside of the station, meant for the parts of Rhea where the atmosphere was still underdeveloped, but it would come in handy with the escaping oxygen of the station.

He would have to thank Wonshik for packing the rebreather.

Taekwoon fastened the mask around his head, and took a deep breath as fresh oxygen filled his lungs— without more carbon-dioxide for it to recycle or an oxygen tank, it was questionable how long Taekwoon was going to be able to use it, but it was better than nothing.

He opened all drawers and lockers he found in the room, looking for something useful, anything, until he came across a rusty box he bashed open on the edge of the command console counter— a heavy gun fell to the ground and metal bullets spilled onto the console. Taekwoon picked them up quickly one by one and tucked the weapon into his belt. The bag was back on his shoulders, feeling like some sort of support— a whisper of promise that he would rejoin with Wonshik and Sanghyuk as long as he had the backpack on him.

There was still electricity, and after a few tense moments, one of the computers booted up.

“Okay, okay,” Taekwoon chanted to himself as a way to calm himself. He was out of the worst, he was out of the worst, he had managed to escape from the grasp of death— what were the chances, really?

The only thing he needed to do now was to find a fucking escape pod or a space ship or something that could withstand the orbital drop to Rhea and the burn of the atmosphere—

The supply cargos.

This hangar was part of a small dock used for supplies sent to the outposts on Rhea. The robotic arms were all torn off the walls, already in space, but that’s not what Taekwoon needed.

He needed the launch site where they sent the cargo to the planet.

Checking the computer database, Taekwoon quickly found the location— the blueprint even showed him a way around the hangar so he wouldn’t have to venture into zero air-pressure again. He couldn’t find any suits for that in the lockers anyway.

A latch on the floor led to another service tunnel— not only were they useful for repairs, but they saved Taekwoon’s life multiple times in the span of two hours.

Was it only just two hours? Three at most?

Three hours ago, everything was normal— three hours ago, Taekwoon was thinking what he should eat for dinner when he got home, how he and Wonshik would spend the rest of the night, waiting for Sanghyuk to finally come home with the results of his exam, and which TV show they would watch meanwhile.

He had wanted take-out, vacillating between two distinct Gaian cuisines that he knew Wonshik would like too— he had been forgetting to eat, focusing too much on his work, and it had been up to Taekwoon to make sure he ate at least once a day.

How would Wonshik survive on Rhea alone?

How would Sanghyuk take on Commander Ahn alone?

Taekwoon needed to be there for them.

The orbital cargos sent to Rhea were essentially loaded into a large cannon that shot them towards the planet. The containers were built to withstand the heat, while keeping the supplies cool, and had drogue parachutes to keep them from crashing into the surface. They were perfect for Taekwoon given the circumstances.

The only problem was that they were not designed to carry people— but Taekwoon couldn’t be picky right now.

The station was barely holding together as it was, and it was a miracle that there was still electricity for Taekwoon to boot up the system and bring the canon to life.

The program that was running told Taekwoon nothing— there were coordinates and codes, and numbers and symbols, nothing that made sense to Taekwoon, but as soon as he saw the name _Arcadis_ he tapped on it, hoping that he just managed to select the destination and he didn’t have to do anything else but to hop into the container— somehow.

Time was ticking, he knew, he felt, as the station shifted— everything moved suddenly, and Taekwoon’s feet lifted off the floor. He grabbed onto the edge of the console.

It seemed like the gravitation generators had finally given up.

 _Loading cargo, estimated launch: 5 minutes,_ read the screen, and orange warning lights flashed on and off, almost making Taekwoon dizzy. Suddenly he felt nauseous, but he didn’t know why— until his body regained its weight and his feet was on the floor, securely. He could feel some kind of force trying to push him sideways, but Taekwoon didn’t pay too much attention to it.

He had five minutes to find a suit that would protect him, and a way inside the container before it could be loaded into the cannon.

The locker room was right next to the control room, and many of the lockers had come open in the many explosions that had shaken the station— Taekwoon took the first suit he saw, vibrant red, and exchanged his torn jeans and shirt for it, tossing the remaining shoe aside and pulling the boots on his feet. He tucked the rebreather in one of his pockets just in case, and placed the helmet on his head. The gun went into his belt, securely.

Outside, standing on the observational deck, Taekwoon saw the container he was supposed to board— at least ten meters up in the air, hanging off of the ceiling.

The cannon was a large cylindrical shape down below with one part of its top open for the container to be loaded into it.

Taekwoon had to get into the container before it could be loaded— but how?

He looked around quickly, hands gripping the railing until his knuckles turned white.

There was a crane on the other side— Taekwoon didn’t need a second thought to start running towards the crane, grabbing onto the ladder at the bottom to climb up. He didn’t enter the cockpit because the jib was already in the perfect position, just above the opening of the cannon.

He took the long path towards the tip on unstable legs, hoping that the station wasn’t going to choose that time to be shaken by another explosion. It was difficult to walk with his feet lifting off the ground as it was, the gravity of the station shifting around.

It only took a moment— Taekwoon arrived just in time, so he didn’t have even a second to hesitate.

He jumped, and bashed his chin into the inside of his helmet as he landed on the top of the container. He found the latch quickly, and opened it, dropping inside the container without wasting time, and secured the panel back after himself. Only then did he take off his helmet and rubbed at his sore chin with a frown. After his nose, a bruise on his chin was the last thing he was concerned with.

The container swayed to the side slightly, but it was loaded into the cannon without malfunction.

Finally, fucking finally something worked without shit hitting the fan, and Taekwoon sent out a silent prayer that this trend would follow until he was on Rhea.

On a sudden whim, Taekwoon strapped himself to the side of the wall by the ropes that were there to hold the crates in place— now _he_ was the cargo.

The launch took him off guard as he couldn’t hear the countdown from inside the cannon, and his body jerked violently, but the restraints held securely for which Taekwoon was grateful. He closed his eyes, chanting under his breath.

He was so, _so_ close, he could almost feel Rhea’s natural atmosphere around him, the filtered sunshine on his cheeks, the soil under his feet.

There were no windows on the container, so he couldn’t see anything, but he felt the moment he was finally out of the station— his heart lurched forward, trying to escape his ribcage. He heard as small objects clanked against the outside surface of the protective casing the container was inside, and Taekwoon hoped that nothing big would crash into him to take him off track and push him out of his trajectory.

It wasn’t until he reached the outer layers of Rhea’s atmosphere that the case popped off the container, and then it was the only thing that separated Taekwoon from burning to ashes as he neared the planet in free fall.

If the launch was bad, then the moment the parachutes opened was unbearable— the whole vessel shook violently, and the straps that were wrapped around Taekwoon were coming loose as he held onto the ropes.

The landing was as smooth as one could be, but Taekwoon still knocked his head into the wall, cracking the helmet’s glass beyond repair. He might have even blacked out for a few minutes, because when he blinked his eyes open, and his senses returned, his body was on fire.

The pain in his muscles was too real for it to be a simple dream— he made it down to Rhea.

Against all odds, he had made it out of the station. With a broken nose and possibly a few broken ribs as well, but he was alive, and he was ready to hunt down the commander.

It hurt like a bitch when climbing out through the latch on the top, but he managed to get out without falling back.

The thing with orbital trajectories was that even if the coordinates were punctual, the objects sent down would never hit that exact spot— Taekwoon had landed somewhere far from Arcadis, but he could clearly see one of the many humongous terraforming pillars that dotted Rhea’s surface, reaching into the sky. The outpost was supposed to be somewhere nearby, so Taekwoon had a visual of his destination at least.

That was until he spotted black smoke billowing from a red canyon between Taekwoon and the gigantic tower.

Even if the chances were slim that it would be either Wonshik or Sanghyuk, Taekwoon still set off towards that direction.

This area of Rhea was showing promising signs of organic life, one of the more developed parts, with trees, bushes and dark green leaves growing thickly over the still reddish upper layer of the original soil of Rhea, rusted iron minerals too toxic for plants to grow in, but somehow still thriving.

Taekwoon exchanged the helmet for the rebreather, knowing that he should protect his eyes from the fine dust, but the glass was so broken that he could barely see anything through the cracks.

As he slid down a slope and tripped in a rock, barely avoiding faceplanting the ground and breaking the rebreather, a sudden rush of thirst overcame him— his mouth was dry, and his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth, his lips cracked with dried blood. His nose was itching, but whenever he touched the tip of his finger to it, a pulsating pain flared up in his whole face that refused to subside for long minutes.

He knew he would need to find a source of water soon— the irony didn’t escape Taekwoon, and he let out an amused snort. He had made it down to the planet from a space station that was falling apart, and he would die of thirst.

The trek towards the smoke felt like an eternity as he was unable to keep his mind off the uncomfortable feeling of thirst and exhaustion, as his body protested against going forward. Nevertheless, Taekwoon continued on, until he spotted the trashed hull of a spaceship at the bottom of a shallow canyon, barely resembling an interceptor anymore.

Taekwoon examined the ship from the top of the cliff, but he couldn’t see any bodies in the cockpit, nor anywhere close.

He fell to his knees and sat back onto his heels, looking up at the sky to gather his strength. He just wanted to take a short break— he noticed a small white object slowly making its way across the blue sky before it went up in flames.

Turning his head, he could see parts of the space station being pulled towards Rhea by its gravitational field, and Taekwoon wondered if the whole station would crash into the planet. He stared up at the flying objects, and some sense of serenity washed over him.

There was something enchanting about watching such an artificial beast as the station, one of the culminations of human creativity and engineering, coming apart at the seams caused by something as small and insignificant as space junk.

In the end, nature always triumphed.

Would Taekwoon triumph against all odds?

A sudden scream slashed across the silence, tearing Taekwoon out of his wondering. He rolled his shoulder and shook the dust off himself that began to collect on his jumpsuit before pushing himself to his feet, and perked his ears, listening carefully.

Another yell came, and this time Taekwoon could locate the direction the sound was coming from. He climbed down the cliff into a small glen with a river of crushed rocks at the bottom that threatened to break his ankles should he step on them in the wrong way. The valley opened into a small and sparse grove of parasol shaped trees— Taekwoon tried to avoid their needle-like leaves as he weaved between their grey trunks until he spotted two people rolling around on the ground as sounds of struggle increased.

Taekwoon hid behind a tree wide enough to cover his body, and peeked out cautiously, heart hammering in his chest.

A recently crashed interceptor, and two people fighting—

Sanghyuk gained the upper hand, straddled the commander and began punching the other man lying underneath him, his movements sluggish already, seemingly barely able to lift his arm to strike the commander.

Taekwoon grabbed his gun hastily, and for a moment, he wondered how to make the weapon go off— it was different than the standard guns found on the station. He pulled back the hammer, and listened as the gun clicked empty.

The commander was trying to reach into his boots as Sanghyuk kept punching him, yelling desperately, _“you killed him, you killed him!”_ and _“I’m gonna kill you!”_

Emptying his bag, Taekwoon crouched down and loaded the gun with trembling hands, pushing the bullets into their slots one by one, six shots, and then snapped the cylinder back, and stepped out from behind the three.

“Sanghyuk!” Taekwoon yelled, catching the boy’s attention, and as soon as he noticed Taekwoon, ducked out of the way, pushing himself to the side as the commander swung his arm in a large arch, knife glinting in his grip.

Taekwoon pulled the trigger, but missed, and the recoil was so strong, the gun almost hit him in the face. Sanghyuk was out of sight, nearby, as Taekwoon stalked closer to the commander still lying on the floor, staring at Taekwoon with wide eyes.

“Didn’t think you’d see me again, huh?” Taekwoon spat, holding the gun towards the commander. He didn’t dare to take his eyes off the man, but he could see Sanghyuk running towards him in his peripheral vision.

“How—” the commander stared at him in disbelief.

“Drop the knife,” Taekwoon ordered. The tip of his finger was turning white as he pressed it onto the hammer, his palms so clammy the gun was about to slip out of his grip. When the knife fell to the ground, Sanghyuk circled the commander cautiously, and picked the weapon up, holding the blade towards the man.

“Get up.”

“What are you gonna do, son?” the commander snorted as he rose to all fours. “Shoot me? Go ahead,” he tipped his chin upward.

“Taekwoon, don’t—,” Sanghyuk began, and that moment of distraction was enough for the commander to lurch forward and tackle Taekwoon, grabbing him by his torso. The gun was knocked out of his hand, and before Taekwoon knew it, the gun went off, searing pain ripping into his shoulder.

The force of the bullet hitting him knocked Taekwoon to the ground, and he tried to crawl away without looking, free hand gripping at his wound and blood seeping through his fingers, but then he heard a choking sound, and a dull thud.

Shoes scraped against the ground, and then there were hands on Taekwoon, turning him around— he was half expecting it to be the commander, with Sanghyuk lying on the floor with the knife in his heart—

“Taekwoon, oh my god, Taekwoon, are you okay?” Sanghyuk cried out, face morphed into a terrified look that Taekwoon never wanted to see on the boy ever again.

“I’m—” Taekwoon choked out, “God, it hurts so fucking much.”

Sanghyuk prodded around the wound with his fingers, trying to cause the least amount of pain.

“It seems like the bullet only scraped you,” Sanghyuk said, “but we still need to stop the bleeding,” he finished.

Taekwoon nodded as he bit into his lip. “My bag is somewhere there,” he swung his good arm in the general direction of the tree he hid behind, “there’re clean clothes.”

Not even a minute later Sanghyuk was back, digging into the backpack, and pulled out a white shirt that would soak up the blood easily, but was thick enough. He cut off the torn sleeve of Taekwoon’s jumpsuit, and used another shirt to clean away the blood as much as he could.

“This will hurt,” Sanghyuk warned Taekwoon, just a second before he fastened the knot around Taekwoon’s bicep.

Taekwoon’s scream echoed in the silence.

Sanghyuk helped Taekwoon sit up, and careful of his arm, hugged him tightly. Taekwoon let out a groan.

“My— ribs,” he coughed, but he couldn’t keep the smile off his face.

“God,” Sanghyuk breathed, looking at Taekwoon with wondering eyes, sparkling with tears that spilled over not even a moment later. “I thought you were dead,” he sobbed, face scrunching as he sniffed.

“Me too,” Taekwoon chuckled. Breathing and talking didn’t hurt as much anymore, but laughing was still something he didn’t want to do often until a doctor patched him up.

“What happened after—” Sanghyuk turned his head to the side as if to point at the commander. Taekwoon looked over Sanghyuk sagged shoulders, and noticed the body lying on its back, the knife standing upright in the commander’s chest.

“The soldiers left, so I pursued after you,” Taekwoon began. He licked his dry lips, and the way Sanghyuk’s eyes followed the motion didn’t escape his attention. Fuck, he was so thirsty. “Confronted him in the hangar when he was about to leave, but he got me and tied me to a pipe.”

“Fuck,” Sanghyuk cursed, closing his eyes. His face twisted, expression twitching as he sat back on his heels. “He knocked me out so bad I only came to when we were about to land— that’s how we crashed,” he explained. “How did you get out?”

“The hangar doors got stuck, and the air pressure field failed. A crate or something crashed into the pipe so I could escape into one of the nearby rooms,” Taekwoon continued. Sanghyuk helped him up in the meantime, and tore a pair of sweatpants into two to tie it around Taekwoon’s neck and lower arm in a makeshift sling.

“You found an escape pod?” Sanghyuk asked curiously, slinging the backpack onto his shoulder. He kneeled down next to the commander, and stared at the body for a silent moment, before he twisted the knife out of the man’s chest and swiped the blade clean of blood on his dirty uniform.

“No, there was a dock nearby with a supply cannon, so I… uh…” Taekwoon trailed off slightly. A pregnant silence fell over them, but a moment later, Sanghyuk burst out laughing.

“Oh my god,” Sanghyuk howled. For a full minute, he couldn’t stop laughing, and Taekwoon followed him too, feeling all tension bleeding out of him— even with coming down from the high of his adrenaline, now that he knew that Sanghyuk was safe, he felt extremely relieved.

“Well, at least we know Wonshik’s plan with the cargo worked—,” Taekwoon nodded, but realization struck him like when a computer would zap him suddenly.

“Wonshik!” Sanghyuk exclaimed. He ran to the edge of the nearby cliff.

“We need to get to Arcadis,” Taekwoon said, walking up to Sanghyuk.

“Arcadis is there,” Sanghyuk replied, pointing into the distance. Below the cliff lay a wide valley of red desert and green grass that transformed into a sparse forest just like the one behind them. Beyond it, Taekwoon spotted a guard tower, the roofs of concrete buildings, and the walls of an outpost.

“I hope Wonshik got there without a problem.”

“Escape pods are the most accurate,” Sanghyuk noted. “So unless something…,” he trailed off, shaking his head. He didn’t need to finish the sentence for Taekwoon to know what he meant. He hoped that nothing happened.

“Let’s go,” Taekwoon squeezed his shoulder, and headed towards the less steep part of the cliff to get down, now that he couldn’t climb. Sanghyuk followed after him, and helped start the descent down into the valley. The boy stopped before he left the edge, turning around and looking at something.

Taekwoon didn’t need to be told what Sanghyuk was looking for. “Leave him,” he said.

To Taekwoon’s surprise, Sanghyuk let out a chuckle, though it wasn’t amused at all.

“He taught me how to wield the knife,” Sanghyuk noted quietly. He turned back towards Taekwoon.

“And in the end, it was his downfall,” Taekwoon finished, and reached his good arm for Sanghyuk to take it, helping him down from the ledge.

They made it to Arcadis while the sun was still high, as parts of the space station created a rain of flaming metal on the sky, though most of the structure was still intact even hours later.

Taekwoon wondered how long until the whole thing would finally explode, and disappear off the sky for good. He wondered what was taking it so long— if there were still people up there, trying to escape all means necessary. He hoped that many of them could make it out and down to Rhea. After that, it was all up to them to survive.

And if many had indeed managed to escape the station, it was all thanks to Wonshik.

Taekwoon avoided thinking about Wonshik just until they finally got to the outside of Arcadis.

The outpost looked abandoned from the outside, crumbling concrete walls going unfixed for decades already— Arcadis had been one of the first settlements on Rhea, home to the colony that had been tasked with the maintenance of the nearby terraforming pillar. The place was established before Taekwoon was even born.

Sanghyuk looked up the closed gate as he supported Taekwoon with one arm. He glanced at Taekwoon with concern.

“Can you stand for a minute?” he asked, and when Taekwoon nodded, released him.

Stepping closer to the gate, Sanghyuk yelled, “Help!” with all his might. “We need help!”

Tense silence followed, with the sky rumbling in the background as parts of the station that were too big for the atmosphere to burn away continued towards the surface. For some reason, Taekwoon didn’t consider the possibility of one of the parts crashing into their location or Arcadis— maybe because his mind was occupied with Wonshik, and with keeping himself alive as his body struggled.

He didn’t feel like he was dying, if he was honest with himself— true his nose was broken, so he could barely breathe through it, and he had some broken ribs, which could’ve punctured his lungs for all he knew, and he had a bullet wound on his arm in desperate need of disinfecting and stitching, but despite all his injuries, he felt invincible.

“Turn around and go back the way you came, space dweller, we don’t welcome your kind here!” came the response from beyond the wall. Taekwoon glanced up at the guard tower next to the gate, and noticed some kind of movement inside.

“Please!” Sanghyuk pleaded. “My friend is badly injured, he needs medical help!”

“Go back to your station!” the voice countered.

“Have you looked up the sky?!” Sanghyuk yelled, pointing up towards the white silhouette of the station. “It’s falling apart! We can’t go back there!”

No response came this time, and Sanghyuk took this moment to walk back to Taekwoon and wrap an arm his shoulder, keeping him upright.

The minutes stretched into an eternity for Taekwoon, until the gate groaned loudly, and began to slide to the side. Sanghyuk jerked his arm up, gun in his stable hand.

A person stepped out from behind the doors, rifle held in front of him.

“Drop the gun!” came the command. Taekwoon waited until Sanghyuk looked at him to nod, and the boy lowered his arm, before he tossed the weapon towards the Arcadis resident. The stranger crouched down and picked it up cautiously. Behind him, another man appeared, the barrel of his own weapon trained at Sanghyuk and Taekwoon.

“Please,” Sanghyuk swallowed as soon as the person got close to them. He was a bit shorter than them, and his skin was dark.

“Your names,” he asked, lowering his own gun and putting the safety back on.

“I’m Sanghyuk, and he’s Taekwoon,” Sanghyuk obeyed, and let the man step next to Taekwoon to support him as well.

“Call me Hakyeon,” he introduced himself, and waved an arm at the other person by the gate who nodded, and disappeared behind the gate. “What the hell happened up there?” he asked, looking up at the sky.

“We aren’t sure either,” Sanghyuk shook his head. Taekwoon let the two other support him as they walked towards the entrance, willing his legs to take one more, two more, three more steps, until Hakyeon would say that he didn’t need to walk anymore.

“What happened to your friend?” Hakyeon blinked in confusion, directing his question at Taekwoon.

“It’s a long story,” Taekwoon added, earning a confused look from Hakyeon.

They were walking on a paved street that curled between empty-looking buildings. The whole place was like a ghost town, and apart from the three of them, and the unknown guy who had disappeared, Taekwoon hadn’t seen anyone else.

“Where are the others?” Sanghyuk asked, glancing around with suspicion.

“Most of the people are down in the shelter since the station started falling apart, but—” Hakyeon said. “There aren’t many of us to begin with. Just a hundred souls.”

“Are you the leader?” Taekwoon asked, quietly, because he barely had enough strength to talk even.

“Yeah, you could say that,” Hakyeon nodded. “Luckily, for both of us, we have a doctor— Hongbin, he will patch you up good, don’t worry,” he assured Taekwoon with a friendly smile.

“That’s good,” Sanghyuk sighed in relief. “Taekwoon went through hell to get to Rhea—” he cut himself off as he came to a sudden halt. He released Taekwoon just a moment before that, but they all stopped.

“Wonshik,” Taekwoon breathed in disbelief as he stared at the dented escape pod lying on the ground in the middle of a small square.

“Wonshik?” Hakyeon asked in confusion.

“The guy! From the escape pod!” Sanghyuk turned around and grabbed Hakyeon’s shoulders, shaking him. “Is he alive?”

“T— yeah, he— he’s good, I think—”

“You think?” Sanghyuk growled, fisting Hakyeon’s collars.

“Sanghyuk,” Taekwoon called out, and after a moment of staring contest, Sanghyuk released Hakyeon.

“We had to subdue him,” Hakyeon explained. “He was out of his mind— oh my god, he was talking about you guys,” his eyes widened in realization.

“What?” Sanghyuk blurted out, but Hakyeon held up a finger as he lifted a device to his mouth, and pressed a button on the side.

“Jaehwan, come to the main square, and bring the cell keys too. Over,” Hakyeon said into the receiver, and released the button. Not even a moment later, the speaker cracked.

 _“On my way,”_ a man replied. _“But why? The guy’s crazy. Over.”_

“These are the guys he was talking about. Over,” Hakyeon laughed with a hand on his forehead. He looked at Sanghyuk and Taekwoon with somewhat akin to wonder in his eyes.

 _“Are you fucking kidding me?”_ Jaehwan yelped, as a man rounded the corner on the other side of the square and jogged towards them.

An hour or so later, when Taekwoon woke up, still in the infirmary Hakyeon had taken him to, where Hongbin, a handsome man with broad shoulders, treated his wounds and his broken nose, the first thing he noticed was the black top of a head resting on his stomach. Sluggish from the sleep, Taekwoon lifted his arm that wasn’t bandaged up, and placed his palm on the mop of hair, threading his fingers into the locks and scraping his fingernails slightly against the scalp until the person shifted, and let out a groan.

Taekwoon smiled at Wonshik, and his smile widened as tears began to roll down Wonshik’s cheeks.

“You fucker,” Wonshik sniffed, his voice breaking as he sat closer. “I told you not to make me wait, and then you turn up like— like this after five fucking hours,” he sobbed. “I thought the waiting would drive me crazy—”

“Shh,” Taekwoon whispered. He rubbed Wonshik’s rosy cheeks with his thumb, sweeping the tears away. “I’m okay. I’m fine. We’re fine— we’re all fine,” he mumbled.

“Hyukie told me what happened,” Wonshik said, and his breath stuttered as he chewed on his lower lip. “God, you’re a superman.”

A snort escaped from Taekwoon’s throat, and the lack of pain surprised him somewhat.

The door opened, revealing Sanghyuk, still dressed in his Academy outfit, and Hongbin following him. Hakyeon lingered outside the room.

“How are you feeling?” Hongbin asked softly. He eyed them as Sanghyuk slipped his hand into Taekwoon’s palm with a gentle expression on his face, and then smiled at Taekwoon.

“I’m good,” Taekwoon answered.

“Do you think you can stand up?” Sanghyuk inquired, his fingers playing with Taekwoon’s.

Oh, how he missed this. It felt like an eternity since he could feel either Sanghyuk or Wonshik like this, and Taekwoon never wanted the past few hours to repeat, ever again.

“Yeah. Did something happen?” Taekwoon raised an eyebrow. Three set of hands were on him as they helped him sit up, and then stand up.

“You’ll see,” Sanghyuk smirked mysteriously. Outside, in what appeared to be Hongbin’s office, Hakyeon was waiting for them, and his face lit up when he saw Taekwoon on his feet.

“Let’s go,” he motioned for all of them, and led the way out of the room. “As soon as it’s over, we’re going down into the shelter,” he informed them as he looked at them over his shoulder. Hongbin and Sanghyuk nodded.

“What’s going on?” Taekwoon whispered to Sanghyuk. Wonshik looked just as confused, but he kept quiet as he rested his hand on the small of Taekwoon’s back.

As a reply, though, Sanghyuk only grinned, almost excitedly, and followed after Hongbin through a short hallway, to a staircase. They took the stairs, Sanghyuk helping Taekwoon with Wonshik behind them, and they made it up to the top safely in just a few minutes.

“It’s happening,” Jaehwan welcomed them as soon as they arrived, and held the door open for them to walk out onto the balcony.

They were on the tower in the middle of Arcadis, the tallest one, offering them a great view of the surrounding areas.

“Up there,” Hakyeon pointed at the sky with his arm stretched out.

In the setting sun’s glow, the crumbling station appeared orange— it had been torn into three big parts, more debris covering the whole sky. They plummeted towards the surface at such a high speed they turned into a flaming rain, towards the horizon and far away from Arcadis.

“Been fighting for hours,” Jaehwan noted wistfully. “It’s like it doesn’t want to give up.”

“I can’t believe it’s going down,” Hongbin sighed. “It’s been there for all our lives, I thought it would outlive us as well.”

“Us too,” Sanghyuk agreed. “It was our home, and to see it like this…” he trailed off. The three Arcadis residents looked at them with pity and sadness in their eyes before they directed their gazes back to the sky.

The station held itself for less than an hour.

A series of explosions could be seen even from Rhea, humongous in its size, before a blinding white light flooded everything, and Taekwoon had to shield his eyes, the light almost burning through his eyelids and in between his fingers.

When he looked back at the sky, _Nibiru_ was nothing but scraps of metal, no longer the majestic space station that breathed life into Rhea, and served as home to tens of thousands of people.

A sense of finality washed over Taekwoon as they all stared at the place on the sky where the station, the great Nibiru used to be, before Hakyeon herded them back inside the tower, and down the stairs into the shelter underground, hoping and praying that Nibiru would be merciful to them in its downfall, and avoid Arcadis.

The shelter was spacious, so a hundred and three people fit inside comfortably, but even so, the silence was overwhelming.

“There’s a lot of things I don’t understand yet,” Hakyeon mused as he twirled in his chair— they were huddled in the overseer’s office that Hakyeon had claimed as his own. Taekwoon got the bed because of his injuries, but Sanghyuk sat next to him as well, their fingers woven together. Jaehwan was raiding the fridge, tossing a bottle to Hongbin, and Wonshik was reading through a book with mild interest— the three of them would need to get familiar with the way of life on Rhea.

“Yeah,” Jaehwan nodded. “Like, where did all that space junk come from, for example?”

Taekwoon looked at Sanghyuk in surprise when the boy moved away from him, and stood up confidently.

“This will probably answer all our questions,” Sanghyuk spoke up, and placed a phone on Hakyeon’s desk. Taekwoon stared at the device, just like everyone else.

“What’s that?” Hongbin asked.

“Commander Ahn’s personal phone. It’s locked, but—” Sanghyuk glanced at Wonshik, and everybody followed him. “I think Wonshik and Taekwoon can crack it.”

Taekwoon leaned against the wall, and looked at the ceiling.

It was far from the end.

 

It was just the beginning.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> LONGEST FIC AND ONLY TOOK ME LIKE ONE AND A HALF WEEK I SHOULD HAVE BEEN STUDYING


End file.
